Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Battlestar Galactica: Season One

I started Battlestar
Galactica without knowing anything about it besides the fact that a friend
gave me the DVDs. The course of the two part miniseries that kicks off the
season did not seem particularly unpredictable at first. Man created the
robotic Cylons; they rose up against us; we won; now, everyone get ready to
gasp, they are coming back for blood. Still, the unfolding chaos was extremely
well done. Some of the characters – such as Katee Stackhoff’s Starbuck and
Jamie Bamber’s Lee – seemed dangerously close to being brash archetypes, but
everything I saw had heart, Edward James Olmos won me over immediately with his
portrayal of Commander Adama, and I was soon sucked into each of their stories.
Furthermore, amidst the chaos of the war’s eruption, the show had numerous
wonderful and small moments. Two pilots fit as many refugees aboard their ship,
but they can save a bare fraction of the crowd. Then, spotting a genius
scientist that could contribute so much to humanity after the war, one of them
gives up his seat. As his only chance of escape flies away, he raises his hand
in farewell.

Only one thing seemed off: the pacing. The war seemed to be
flying by. In fact, Commander Adama and the rest of the cast onboard the
old-fashioned, about to be decommissioned and museum-ized (and what a nice
touch, that!) Battlestar Galactica don’t have their guns loaded when the rest
of the human fleet is annihilated. Slowly, it dawned on me that, while Battlestar Galactica was quite capable
of showing humanity fighting a defensive war for its survival, it had its eye
on a bigger prize. Indeed, by the miniseries’ halfway point, humanity has lost
its war. By the end of the miniseries, even Adama has given up the idea of
combat.

By the start of the first regular episode, we are left with
Adama and the Battlestar Galactcia escorting
a ragtag fleet of civilian refugees away from our devastated system while the
Cylons destroy the rest of humanity. We are heading towards the mythical and
long lost earth, Adama says – but, though he doesn’t admit it, even he doesn’t
know where it is. We are alone in space, we are all that’s left, and we are
pursued. And we have a damn brilliant premise for a TV show right there, I
think.

It’s not a premise that the show squanders. The transition
from explosive, fast paced miniseries to episodic storytelling is brilliantly
made with 33, in which flight turns
our survival from an epic clash to a never-ending test of endurance which will
end us if we fail once. Into all of that comes a terrifying realization: the
Cylons can, if they so choose, look just like us. They are among those of us
that are left, and their strikes from within might be enough to finish us off.

The show’s morality is not so simple, though, to paint
anyone with genuine flesh and blood as good, and any discussion of its characters
would be incomplete without James Callis’ Gaius Baltar. He is the genius
scientist I mentioned earlier, he is the man who (unknowingly seduced by a
Cylon agent) allowed the attack to take place, he is the one who hallucinates
the Number Six Cylon speaking to him, he is key in the fleet’s power structure
– and he is a brilliantly amoral bastard. The show does an early and excellent
job establishing his intellectual prowess, and it then does just as good a job
throwing him out far past his depths. Episode after episode, we see his
confidence stripped away until he is at the utter mercy of Number Six. In the
few realms in which he is outside her influence, we see him abandon right and
wrong and cleave to simple survival while the rest of the fleet, still trusting
in him, knows nothing.

He is not the show’s only standout character. Battlestar Galactica has a massive cast
and does the best job I’ve seen on television of giving the feel of a military organization
with more than four or five blokes in it. More impressive still, that varied
class is developed. Characters like Lee and Starbuck are half heart and half
swagger, capable of depth when focused upon and capable of riveting motion when
on the sidelines. Michale Hogan’s Saul Tigh, the ship’s XO, is an often present
but rarely focused upon character who, when given a bit of the spotlight in
episodes like Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down,
shows a powerful but quiet strength and struggle. Such understated arcs give
the viewer confidence that, though we don’t get to study every crewmember of
the ship, each of them likely does have a powerful story.

My favorite personal arc in the show, though, is definitely
the question of the Cylon’s humanity as exemplified in Grace Park’s Boomer. Early
on, the audience learns that the pilot is a Cylon agent, but even she does not
know her true origins. We see her face the piling evidence against her, and we
see her growing terror at the possibility and determination to prove herself
worthy and human. Early in the season, her relationship with Chief is likely
the show’s warmest element; his leaving her and the action she takes in the
season’s penultimate episode, meanwhile, are heartbreaking.

Boomer’s story, and the question of whether Cylons are truly
alive or even human, is contrasted against Tahmoh Penikett’s Helo’s adventures
on Caprica. Helo was the pilot who gave up his seat in the miniseries. Left
behind, he is now navigating a deserted world in the company of a duplicate of
Boomer’s model of Cylon. She’s there to manipulate him to some nefarious
purpose, but the two fall in love.

All of that might have been interesting, but Helo’s
storyline proves the show’s only real annoyance. Simply put, nothing happens.
The two just wander around on Caprica, and the entire thing seems utterly
without significance to anything or anyone else in the universe until the final
episode. The arc does also raise and then forget some uncomfortable questions
that, if they weren’t about to be answered, should probably have been left
unsaid. For one thing, since the majority of the city they are in actually
seems perfectly intact, where did all the people go? Why isn’t it rubble? Where
are the bodies? Why are there no
other survivors?

A far more interesting source of questions and conflicts is
that of the fleet’s political situation. By following the constitution’s chain
of succession far into the double digits, the fleet has appointed Mary
McDonnell’s Laura Roslin President, and the interplay between the military and
political branches of command is fascinating and surprisingly well handled. Principles
and practicalities come into conflict, and one must wonder how desperate the
situation must be before democracy and right should be cast aside. Other
impossible choices are often presented with the same skill, such as when the
characters are forced to destroy a civilian ship, passengers aboard, that the
Cylons have managed to track time and time again. Such successes go a long way
towards forgiving the show’s occasional thematic flops, such as its weak
attempt to evoke 9-11 by discussing a “no fly” list that prevents a known
traitor from moving about; it is true that prisoners cannot fly, but the
reasons for that have rather more fundamentally to do with the fact that they are
not allowed to do anything than with a specific barring from aviation.

In terms of dramatic moments, the show does have the
occasional jarring failure. No less than two plots rely completely on future
military technology having no safety features and simply being dropped by
various incompetents, the strangest part of which was that there was already an
established saboteur plot that could have picked up the slack with something deeper
than “oops!” Elsewhere, we have an address to prisoners that is, for some
inexplicable reason, preceded by freeing them from their cells, and you have
the usual insistence on characters making objections to dubious plans not in
the planning stage but in the “burst in and save the day” one when it would
really be better to just get on with it.

Such qualms, though, are only so noticeable in comparison to
the show’s high quality level. Battlestar
Galactica throws a well drawn cast into a stunning situation and delivers
on that setup. The universe feels filled with promise, and I look forward to
seeing what it can throw at the fleet and at me in future seasons.

...Who?

I spend my free time reading and writing. In addition to assorted other content, I'll be posting a book review every Tuesday. I have also published a fair few stories, a complete list of which can be found here. If you want to get in contact with me for any reason, feel free to email me at nskteh[at]gmail[dot]com.